The Good, the Bad and the Unready Read Online Free PDF Page B

contemporary historian John Foxe. In his massive work Acts and Monuments Foxe gives colourful descriptions of the lives and deaths of the ‘English Martyrs’ –those who were executed for their Protestant beliefs. The book, which never specifically uses the name ‘Bloody Mary’ but refers instead to the queen’s ‘bloody persecution’ and to her successor, GOOD QUEEN BESS , as ‘sparing the blood’ of religious opponents, was published on the continent during Mary’s lifetime and in England a few years after her death. It rapidly became a best-seller in an England that had quickly reverted to Protestantism, and a copy was to be found in nearly every church in the country.
    Harald Bluetooth
    Harald, king of the Danes, c.910–c.985
    The name ‘Bluetooth’ or ‘Blåtand’ has nothing to do with King Harald’s dental discoloration, but refers to his dark complexion and hair – something of a rarity among Vikings. Similarly, this son of Gorm the OLD did not fit the traditional Viking image of a raping and pillaging pagan warrior either. Instead, he was a Christian who after his baptism in 960 strove to convert the Danes to his new faith.
    Inscriptions on the famous runic stone at Jelling, carved around 980, claim that he ‘won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian’. This may have an element of truth in it, since for the next fifty years Danish kings were so powerful that they turned their attention away from any domestic strife and towards their English counterparts.
    Bluff King Hal
    Henry VIII, king of England, 1491–1547
    For a short period of time Henry enjoyed the title of ‘Fidei Defensor’ or ‘Defender of the Faith’. It was an accolade conferred upon him by Pope Leo X but later revoked by Pope Paul III when the king divorced the first of his six wives, denounced papal supremacy and became the greatest ‘lapsed Catholic’ of them all. In 1544 Parliament conferred the title upon Edward VI, and it is a designation still enjoyed by the British monarchy today.
    Somewhat more colloquially, and presumably not to his face, Henry was known as ‘Old Copper Nose’. This had nothing to do with his ruddy and robust complexion but was rather the result of his command that the mint should produce coins with twice as much copper as silver. With use, the silver would wear away on the most raised part of the coin, namely the nose of the king, which gave rise to the nickname. The more famous moniker ‘Bluff King Hal’, alluding to the monarch’s hearty, barrel-chested charm and no-nonsense personality, was bestowed upon him by later generations.
    Philip the Bold
    Philip II, duke of Burgundy, 1342–1404
    As in the case of ‘Justinian the Great’ and his partner Theodora ( see GREAT… BUT NOT THAT GREAT ), Philip’s fame as one of the most remarkable men of his century would be considerably more modest were it not for his wife. His creation of a powerful, independent Burgundian state simply would not have been so successful had he not married Margaret of Male, daughter of the count of Flanders.
    At first glance, Margaret might not have seemed a real catch for the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered Philip. Some may have gone so far as to suggest that the plain, shabbily dressed noblewoman who was fond of whistling and sitting on the grass was simply too vulgar for the bold soldier and brilliant statesman. But Margaret possessed a quality that made many a suitor blind to any imperfections: as daughter of the count of Flanders, she was by far the richest heiress in all of Europe, and in 1384 the couple owned not only Flanders, the most highly industrialized part of Europe, but also Artois, Nevers, Rethel and several other regions of the Holy Roman Empire.
    Philip the Bold see GALLIC PRACTICE
    Philip II, king of France, 1245–85
      Henry Bolingbroke
    Henry IV, king of England, 1366–1413
    Three miles west of Spilsby in eastern Lincolnshire nestle the remains of a Norman castle